The present invention relates generally to online communities and, more particularly, to communication inversion for online communities.
Online social network communities are gathering places for people to discuss topics of mutual interest to members of a particular group. Such online communities are often used within businesses to facilitate and encourage employee communication regarding a particular subject or group of subjects. For example, a company may have a Software Developers online community organized around the general topic of software development, and may have a related community for Commercial Software Developers organized around the topic of developing software for commercial purposes.
In practice, new groups or sub-communities often arise from an original online community, and may be focused on topics of interest that overlap with those of the original online community. The creation of new groups or sub-communities may lead to short or long term loss of member activity or the quality of member activity within the original online community. The diminishing vitality of the original online community may harm the overall quality of discourse within an organization, and can lead to less desirable communication patterns amongst members of the original online community. While solutions have been proposed to assess the vitality of a particular online community, there are presently no adequate solutions to remediate diminishing vitality within an online community.